Vettel: The forecast isn’t looking great

Car 1, Sebastian Vettel
“We couldn’t learn too much today, so we just got used to the conditions, as there may be rain tomorrow and also on Sunday. The forecast isn’t looking great. It would have been good to have got some dry running in, especially this afternoon to test a couple of things and see how the car feels – it’s hard to get a proper baseline when the conditions keep changing. We have to carry the extremes into tomorrow and Sunday, so we obviously tried to limit the running on those tyres.”

Car 2, Mark Webber
“That was a bit unreal. We didn’t expect the rain to be this bad today, but it was quite heavy at times – we even used the extreme full wet tyre. That’s two races in a row now with tricky conditions. We haven’t done much dry running yet, but Sunday looks like it will be better weather-wise. We needed to check what the track conditions were like in terms of grip level, as it’s a different layout here to Silverstone and different asphalt. We tried a few small new parts today. The lap times were all over the place and there were a few incidents, but we got everything we could out of that session.”

Racing in Formula One is truly a team effort and as such the RB8 bears the signature of every department of Red Bull Racing, from reception to race track. But just how does each section of the factory contribute to the final result? Here's how…

This week: Manufacturing

People think: they press up a few new front wing end plates every now and then and spend the rest of the time leaning against the CNC machines, drinking coffee and talking about how the designers’ spec is always wrong

What they actually do is: (deep breath) run a machine shop, composite department, laminating department, trim shop, CNC/pattern shop, composite build department, paint shop, fabrication shop, production office and programming… phew. They buy, programme and produce thousands of parts every month to the highest quality, running 24/7. But that’s the nature of F1, the pace of development is incredibly swift and for the team to stay competitive the manufacturing department has to be at the top of its game day in, day out.